


Ghosts that Linger

by Churbooseanon



Series: Starlight Challenges [7]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Character Study, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-01-20
Packaged: 2018-03-08 08:54:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3203321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Churbooseanon/pseuds/Churbooseanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ghosts prowl the halls of the Mother of Invention. Most people can’t see them, but the man known by the designation of Agent Florida knows better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts that Linger

**Author's Note:**

> Starlight challenge prompt for January 12th: But I'm real enough, aren't I? Real enough for you to bother with me.

Ghosts prowl the halls of the Mother of Invention. Most people can’t see them, but the man known by the designation of Agent Florida knows better.

Of course most people aren’t like Agent Florida. Most people aren’t members of a Project Freelancer. Most people don’t live their lives thrust into a military position when they had a relative disdain for military forces and the rigid way they operated their daily lives. Most people, he supposes, don’t know thirty-seven distinct and separate ways to kill a man using only a toothbrush. The number, to be fair, drops down to only about twenty-two if you’re applying it to a Sanghelii, and a paltry fifteen when you approach the problem of a Jiralhanae—and it should be noted there was about forty-two ways to kill a Unggoy with a toothbrush but the only truly fun way involved their methane tank and a rather lovely explosion of color—but the point is people on the Mother of Invention did not possess the unique set of skills upon which the man known as Florida prides himself.

So, being completely and utterly fair most people on the Mother of Invention are poorly equipped to see the ghosts that haunt the halls and dog the steps of most of the better known names in this floating tin can in space.

Okay, no. Being truly and perfectly fair most people on the MoI lacked access to the personnel records that Florida had and so they had no reason go to looking for those ghosts. But he does have that access. He has seen those files. And so he gets to look, and he gets to see what no one else would recognize.

Take Agent Maine, for instance. Florida is up early some mornings and watches the beast of a man move through the halls. He’s quiet, agile, stealthy for a man his size when he isn’t in his armor. That being said, it’s rare when Florida can find that he’s caught the big man unawares. Maybe Maine doesn’t realize he’s haunted, but the way he looks behind himself, the way he keeps himself aware of his surroundings… Florida wonders if he knows the men and women who he failed to save in Covvie raids follow in his wake. He wonders if Maine can even begin to see that the way his shoulders sag when someone is hurt on a mission tells the story of the lives he failed to save, the people he failed to protect, even the small village on some rock so far outside of core territory space that it had practically been asking to be glassed. Yes, the ghosts hang thick around him, a cloud that flows through the halls and is the true reason people can’t look straight at Maine, the true source of the chill around him that few seemed to cut through.

His ghosts are, in a way, less personal than that of Agent South Dakota. He can almost see the woman that is a chain wrapped time and time and time around South. The files don’t have a picture, but he imagines she’s beautiful. When she sits in the cafeteria he sees her as a haze of blond hair and piercing blue eyes, her arms wrapped lovingly around her daughter’s neck. Protective. Loving. Comforting. Honestly, in that woman’s place he’d want to throttle the girl. Then again, he’s never been a parent, so who is he to say what motivations are there? All he knows is what the files say and what he’s seen. She’s a hard girl, that South, and he knows it’s because something has to weigh against the soft, possessive weight of her ghost.

They say that snipers remember the faces of every last kill they count. That somewhere secret, somewhere safe they keep a tally board. Florida imagines that it’s on the blade of the non-standard issue hunting knife he sees North take into the field. Can’t imagine any other reason that the ‘gentler’ twin carries the thing. A scratch for every life. Or maybe he scratches it into his gun somewhere, and the ghosts arise from it, wrap around him in a cloying embrace every time he takes his weapon down. The ghosts that one creates are hungry, Florida thinks. They crave and yearn and scream for blood, and North feeds them with every shot. But he imagines it’s the ghost that isn’t yet there which haunts North the most. The ghost he strives, with every bullet, to keep from manifesting. Really, what place does family have in war?

Florida sighs as he hops down off of the set of crates that had been left to sit in the halls outside of one of the lesser training rooms, and he walks along the glass wall, frowning to himself in his helmet. It’s easier, he muses, to see them when he’s in his helmet. He’s got them all programmed to see a smile in that helmet. Ironic, he believes, since the curve to the visor actually looks like a frown. But they see what they want to see, and not what is really there, which is how Maine and the twins can be up this late, working their different routines in the training room, not noticing the spirits that linger around them. Seeing only what he wants is how Maine can stand there, taking apart a training bag, and not be crushed under his failures. How South can face her brother in CQC and not be crippled by the loss she’s inflicted on them both, and how North doesn’t see her as another victim waiting to happen.

In a helmet he can go anywhere, see anything, and they immediately seem to forget he exists.

It’s better this way. It means he can do his work, and he is so very good at his work. And it’s work that takes him through the halls. His evening, post-training, pre-dinner routines. Observations really. His task to walk among them, gauge their mental states, their faith, their loyalty. No one reads them like he does, no on as invisible as he is, and that means…

Connie. Dear, sweet, naïve, spirited, thoughtful Connie. Florida stops short of the hall he knows she’ll be down. Another day, another furtive message. He wonders who it is to today. Is it the people back home, a message she knows will be redacted to the point of becoming pointless before it is even sent? No, not them, Connie gave up on those particular spirits long ago. Well then, what about her old unit. The one she claims to have worked with. Or the commander of her old unit in ONI? No. No, Florida knows the wisp that guides her most these days. He leans against the wall and listens to her whisper. It’s a boy, a bit younger than her, and a fiery one at that. UNSC enlisted man who has gotten himself into the very deep pocket of a man that Connie should be staying away from if she doesn’t want the boss to hunt her down. But the simple fact is that the man fights for a cause, and Connie… She knew dear Michael’s brother. While he doesn’t know the lies she feeds to him, Florida knows why she does it. Knows the reason she hates her armor load-out. Knows she hates the constant reminder of the one bomb she couldn’t diffuse, the man killed trying to get her to safety, the promise she made… It’s going to get her killed one day, and Florida thinks he might be called upon to do it.

What a shame. She had such… promise.

Florida sighs and continues on his way to the cafeteria, ignoring the minor crew along the way. To be honest he knew their ghosts too, knew they all had lost people to the war. That is what brought them here, as much as the drafts and other situations. Friends, family, loved ones lost in a fight for survival that Florida wasn’t sure they would win. Their ghosts intrigue him less. Their ghosts shape them but they do not define them in the same ways.

Not like… Well, Florida smiles as he enters the cafeteria. They aren’t, for instance, like Agent York. Now there was a story that was more interesting than others. A man who had lost not only his father and his brother to the war, but one who had grown close to the members of his unit, to his division. A man who had an easy time of things, who fit with people well. He, according to the records, had been responsible for the death of every last one of them. Failure with a lock had resulted not only in the loss of his unit, but a whole town to a Covvie assault. Florida thinks he blames himself, and from the mission reports, York’s probably right to blame himself. But that’s just what Florida thinks. He assumes that’s why he catches York pacing through the halls at night, loading himself up on cup after cup of coffee. His ghosts are the kind that don’t let you sleep at night. Honestly Florida’s would be just as bad if he even cared for a moment that they exist.

Washington, on the other hand, is a strange thing. No matter how many angles Florida looks at him from, no matter how many times he seeks and prods and pokes and pries he finds nothing. No ghosts beyond the ones that should be expected. No great tragedies that many hadn’t already suffered from. No, there was something about the cheerful, disarming personality that was completely and utterly genuine. It frustrates Florida in ways that he can’t even begin to list because he doesn’t understand why Washington is here. Yes he’s seen the files, the records, everything, but that doesn’t change the fact that Washington lacks the thing that is most important to what drives the Freelancers. And yet he fits, so well. Seems to lighten the burdens of those around him, and Florida is torn. They might be better served by a person who had the same pains, same suffering. Instead he calms them, soothes them, makes them fight harder. It isn’t something Florida knows how to quantify, but which seems to have helped the team since his arrival.

But the true haunting, the true ghost of this place, of the whole damn program, is centered around the teal clad Freelancer who leans against the wall by the coffee pot. Florida thinks that she’s watching York and Wash having an animated conversation, but at the same time he can’t be sure. She’s different since the arrival of Tex. Of course most people don’t have their ghosts given form. Most people don’t strive against the echo of a loved one.

This whole mess, Florida knows, is because of the ghost that haunts the Church family. The Director, Carolina, they both still live in the shadow of a woman named Allison, a woman whose memory was so strong she left her traces in an AI and due to whom this whole process was going to shit. The point was to make a fighting unit, people that could do the impossible. Instead what they got was everything falling apart around his head and Florida not sure if it was worth it anymore. And all for the…

No. Tex wasn’t a ghost. She was more than that, Florida thinks. A demon, dragged out of hell itself, and put into questionable service. Her presence tainted all those around her, and while Florida isn’t scared of creatures like that, he’s here because he believes in something. The way he sees her corrupting this place, a ghost run rampant and pulling, tearing at everyone, makes him angry. Since her arrival York has lost an eye, Maine his voice, and these new AIs were hardly helping things. Fragments off of a fragmented man, literal ghosts not given their own forms, put placed where they could make use of others. And while he thinks he likes her when he see the way she is when she’s in full control of herself, he sees the way she drives Carolina crazy, how she infuriates South, how she makes Connie hesitate.

They should be a team.

The very thought of that particular haunting, the ghost that drives the Director to insanity and Carolina to sleepless nights and dangerous edges kills Florida’s appetite. Of course he can’t just show up and walk off and not have it go without comment. So he grabs a tray, sends a brief salute to Carolina, and loads up on finger foods. Some rolls, some fruit, a pair of sandwiches. Then, burdened down, he heads for where he really wants to be.

The door is open to him. The door is always open to him. Not just because he knows all the override codes and how to break through any lock the MoI uses. No, the private code for this door had been given to him long ago, and now…

There’s a pale blue light in the room when he enters, and it flashes out almost before the door opens. And there, he supposes, it is. The ghost that haunts Florida the most, the one that consumes Wyoming from the inside out.

“Gamma still doesn’t want to consider talking to me?” Florida asks, setting the tray down on Wyoming’s desk. “I brought some food.”

“Sorry, chap,” Wyoming says softly. “He’s just…”

Florida lets Wyoming trail off and doesn’t press. He always wants to press, and he’s certain Wyoming knows it. Knows it because Gamma knows it and whether they admit it to the Director or not, they are more closely, deeply connected than even Delta and York seem to be.

They all know he isn’t going to press. He isn’t going to grab Wyoming by the shoulders and scream in his face. He isn’t going to demand that Wyoming look at him. That Wyoming see him. He isn’t some bit of code. He isn’t the torn out piece of a man who hates himself. Florida lives, Florida breathes, Florida keeps moving forward rather than looking into the past.

He’s real. He’s real and alive and yes he is a terrible person who has done unforgivable things but he doesn’t care about that. Real and alive and there and since Gamma…

Florida is the ghost that haunts Wyoming, he thinks. He’s never seen the man as caring about those he killed. His files say he had no family, no loved ones, didn’t care for his unit. Wyoming was one of those men who was in it because of survival, and he believed. But Florida…

Florida was the chain around his neck. Florida was the thing that followed, wished, clung. A living ghost trying to tie Wyoming down. And doomed. Dear god was he doomed to always be that. Since Gamma, since they became one…

He wants to shout and rage and plead. Instead he takes one of the sandwiches, a piece of fruit, and heads to the door.

If Wyoming won’t bother with him, then why waste his time?


End file.
